When Angels Deserve to Die
by Twilight Mix N' Match Contest
Summary: Renesmee is a Guardian Angel that s made an unconscious but disastrous mistake and has been sentenced to a human life. She thought she would yearn to return to God but she falls in love. Yet, the longer her life is, the worst the earth fares.


**Title:** When Angels Deserve to Die

**Pairing:** Benjamin (Edilson Nascimento in my head) and Renesmee

**Rating: **M

**Genre: **Paranormal Romance

**Wordcount: **6433

**Summary: **Renesmee is a Guardian Angel that´s made an unconscious but disastrous mistake and has been sentenced to a human life. She thought she would yearn to return to God but she falls in love. Yet, the longer her life is, the worst the earth fares.

**Warnings: **It´s not my intention to offend any religious beliefs. I am catholic myself, and I understand this is in no way aligned with the Bible or any other Sacred Book. Nor is my presumption or claim having any deep knowledge about angelic mythology, this is merely a work of fiction; all this comes from my head which is never out of the gutter. So be warned.

**Disclaimer: **Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight, not me. I feel the need to clarify this, as there are many people who often confuse our work.

Ӂ

* * *

**When Angels Deserve to Die**

"_**Trust in my self-righteous suicide, I cry when Angels deserve to die."**_

—**System of a Down **_**(Chop Suey)**_

_Ӂ_

_Angelic Laws_

_Guardian Angels must remain with one person throughout life. Some people have more than one. _

_Guardian Angels should offer unconditional love without any judging._

_Guardian Angels are intermediaries between humans and God. _

_Guardian Angels will guide humans through their senses, but cannot influence a person's will. _

_Guardian Angels will only help and look after humans who have asked for their assistance. _

Ӂ

Benjamin remembered the first time it rained during Easter, because that night had been special for him. Nobody thought much of it at first but, of course, people commented. It was unprecedented, after all.

That moment, everything started to change. It was so slow that people thought of nothing more than the minor inconvenience it represented, but soon, what used to be a clear night sky curdled with stars and a steadily filling moon became a smudged blackboard of weeping clouds that, amidst deafening and blinding thunderbolts, presented them with water and, for the first time ever, hail.

Days behaved normally; the sun shone bright and scorching, quickly evaporating the absurd nightly downpours.

After the first few years of nocturnal rains, days started being weird, too.

Blinding lights were seen coming from the woods even during the day hours when the sun shone at its fullest. It was an intermittent, pulsing, golden light that seemed to vibrate and made the skin prickle pleasantly.

People were too terrified to investigate, and they felt –with reason- that the new phenomenon was related to the crazy rains. Though they could not have possibly known what had really started with that first anachronistic rain.

Benjamin was braver and more curious than the rest of them, though.

He had secrets of his own.

When he was sixteen, he discovered he could affect matter. He could bend earth, water, winds, and fire to do his bidding. It all started with a dream.

The night before his discovery, Benjamin dreamt he was lost in the woods –the same woods where the lights were pulsing now– and that he had fallen down a ravine. In his dream, he had injured his leg and his voice was not loud enough to bring any help his way.

Then, out of nowhere –as it usually happens in dreams-, a breathtaking girl had come to him.

She spoke a strange, hissing, gurgling, cooing language that made his soul sing a song to which his heart set the pace.

The girl undressed him and touched all of him from feet to head, making all his pains go away. Being caressed this way by such a beautiful girl awoke Benjamin´s body to uncontrollable, unbearable hungers, and he unwittingly prayed.

"God, please… let her touch me more…"

Her warm hand grabbed a hold of his need and struck him to bliss.

When he woke up the next morning on his bed, he felt invigorated if a bit confused by the sense of loss he had from his dream.

Ten years later, he readied to find out what those lights were.

Benjamin found himself before an explosion of feathers. They seemed to be swirling as if trapped in a gigantic bubble, and from the very center of it, a light throbbed like a living heart. He could feel the waves of energy that radiated from it.

Tentatively, he reached with his fingers towards the apparent barrier. As he felt a tingle at contact, the feathers fell to the ground at once, as if they were weighted and rain invaded the once spared space.

Naked and beautiful, there was a girl curled like a shrimp on the wet grass with dirty feathers stuck to her alabaster skin and coppery hair.

Benjamin approached the source of his curiosity with caution; he caressed her hair to clear it from her face. She looked pale and her purplish lips parted when he moved her to pick her up. Cotton Candy. A wave of lust and dizziness overtook him for a couple of seconds at the scent of her breath.

She opened her cinnamon eyes and fixed him with them.

"Benjamin," she whispered.

He carried her to his house and laid her on his bed. He sat marveling at his discovery; it was the girl from his long-ago dream. He realized that deep down he always knew she had been real.

Ӂ

She hadn´t meant to cause any troubles. She just could not let him suffer. She should have waited for his prayer, but nowadays, people never prayed, she was sure people didn´t even know they needed to _ask_ for their guardian angel´s help. It was not her place to question, but she thought the asking law should be more flexible. Emergencies should be taken into account. That is, other emergencies than untimely deaths. Like undeserved horrible deaths.

She was sure he would soon die, for it was his time, but she could not let her charge suffer like that. He was kind, hardworking, and generous with everybody. She was sure dying alone and cold, and in so much pain, could not be what God had intended for him.

So she healed him, and as she was about to carry him home, she heard him utter words that could only be construed by her as prayers.

_Now he prays!_ She thought as a trickle of regret coursed her heart. Maybe she should have waited, after all…

He seemed to be tortured by his need, so she assisted him with her hands and then transported him to his bed.

She had no idea her actions would bring about so much chaos.

When she tried to go back to God, she was informed by The Quaddisin her charges had been reassigned.

She was also informed that this was because of the sexual relief she had provided. She had been prepared to plead about the righteousness of saving him; because that was the rule she thought she had broken. She hadn´t considered this other possibility, since she knew Guardian Angels aroused their charges all the time through dreams. When couples where having a difficult time surrendering sexually to their rightful match, Guardian Angels would sometimes step in, give them a little nudge in their dreams, so to speak; though it was true that they didn´t do this with their own bare hands.

She was told that had she left him there after she healed him, he would have gone back to the safety of his home the next day, and died a peaceful death in his sleep that very night as it was his time to die; in which case, she would have been punished less harshly. She would have been made one of Suriel´s Angels of Death for a while; and then, after a mere couple of centuries, reinstituted to being a Guardian Angel.

Currently, the thing was that when she touched him sexually, she had transferred celestial powers to him, making him practically immortal.

"Look at the earth, Renesmee," said Soqued Hozi, the keeper of balance. "There is a deluge going on due to the unbalance you created. The tiniest of our actions may bring colossal consequences if we are not careful. God is not capricious with his rules; everything has a rhyme and reason."

"To restore the equilibrium you have upset, you need to choose a human to die in his stead or become a human yourself." Suriel, told her, to which Soqued nodded.

All in all, it meant she was sentenced to die. For how could she point her finger and kill a human for her mistake.

"Raphael? Michael?" she sought their support. They looked heartbroken, but shook their heads while holding them high. They were doing what was right.

She squeezed her eyes and willed this reality to be undone.

When she fell, it was raining torrentially on earth.

She wasn´t scared of the fall; she was used to flying freely through space, but when the ground approached, and her descent didn´t dawdle, she felt her first taste of fear.

She still had her wings, but they were useless, and the only thing that conserved her sanity was that she knew for a fact that she had to live on earth before her time to die came. But she knew nothing about being physically hurt.

The impact felt like nothing she had experienced before. She had no idea how mortal beings dealt with pain. It felt as if the entire planet had fallen on top of her and she had to be conscious for every second of it.

She could see the rain around her, but it didn´t reach her, only her feathers floated near her. She became aware of a steady, rhythmic sound and eventually related it to a pulsing in her chest. She noticed that her glow was not constant now and that in fluctuated with every beat of what she knew was her heart.

Renesmee lost track of time. All she knew was the pain that mercifully, little by little, subsided and in the end focused on her back, where her wings had once sprouted from her body.

At some point, she had felt unbearable cold as the downpour finally broke through whatever had been holding it back. But with the rain came the most welcome sight she could think of under these circumstances: Her Benjamin.

He lifted her up and carried her through the woods, keeping water away from her once again.

She wanted to see where they were going, but her eyelids were really heavy and her thoughts were scrambled and incoherent. She thought that maybe she was dying now, and was scared again. She pitied the human race for their short life span, she was sure it was longer than hers had been. She guessed falling all the way from Heaven would kill anyone, though. She tried once more to open her eyes, but only managed a couple of blinks before she felt the irresistible need to take a deep breath through her mouth. Then she closed her eyes for good.

Strange scenes invaded her mind. She was in Heaven, she guessed. She must be returning to God, and she felt grateful that He would accept her back so soon; it seemed dying hadn´t been that bad. But then Benjamin was there asking God to let her touch him, and she again complied. Only this time, she felt a tingle between her legs, and asked him to touch her, too. When he was about to, she opened her eyes to find Benjamin shaking her shoulder.

"Wake up… you´re having a nightmare…" he whispered.

It took her a moment to realize she was not dead. In fact, by the way her body was protesting, she was not an angel again, either. She still felt the need to be touched, and she rubbed her legs together to help the throbbing, but that was just part of it. Her stomach hurt and rumbled, her muscles were still sore from the fall, and her eyes were not working properly; she could barely distinguish the shapes around her.

"Why can´t I see well?" she asked, then gasped as she heard her voice. Not only wasn´t she speaking her language, but she sounded completely flat.

"The lights are off. You looked like you needed to rest; you´ve been sleeping for a day," he said as he got up and walked a few paces before turning the lights on.

At the sudden glare that hurt her eyes, she covered her face and moaned.

"Sorry," said Benjamin, turning the ceiling light off and clicking a night lamp on, then he came to crouch next to her bed, by her head.

Slowly, she let her eyes adapt to the softer light. And when she could keep them open without furrowing her brow, she studied Benjamin.

He was different, older. His body was that of man now. He looked almost as beautiful as Michael or Gabriel, but he had no wings. What confused her the most was not the fact that she had just compared a human to Archangels, but that she wanted to touch him like she had never wanted to touch anyone before.

Her hands ached with the need, so she reached for him and caressed his jaw, his lips.

Benjamin gasped and his eyes got impossibly wide as his lips parted under her fingers.

"Benjamin…" she whispered, and he leaned towards her touch.

"What— who are you?" he wondered aloud.

She smiled. "I´m Renesmee, and I´m human."

Benjamin thought that was a strange thing to say, but didn´t comment. Instead, he confessed.

"I remember you, but for years I thought you were a dream. Tell me how is that possible? Please."

So she did.

Ӂ

Benjamin listened with increasing horror as Renesmee spoke.

"You were thrown from Heaven because of me?"

He had no troubles believing she was, had been, an angel. She looked the part, alright. Besides, he saw the site of her landing: the invisible bubble that protected her from the rain, the feathers floating and swirling as if the energy that pulsed from her body gave them life, the glowing aura that had been wrapped around her. He stood up feeling anguish and something akin to anger; he knew what happened when he felt such strong emotions. When the room started shaking, he shut his eyes and took deep breaths to maintain control.

"No, I fell from grace because I broke the rules," she explained, looking as his face contorted in concentration.

"If I had not asked for you to…" he blushed and made some noncommittal movement with his hands. "You would be an angel still."

"Benjamin, look at me. That power you just displayed is the reason I´m here. You didn´t ask for that. You asked for my touch, it´s true, but it was up to me to do it or not. I made a mistake; it was my responsibility to distinguish right from wrong. You are only human, and you had suffered so much fear and pain that night, but I should have known better."

He was about to protest when her stomach rumbled and her panicked expression stopped him.

"I think I´m dying already; it hurts," Renesmee said curling on the bed.

"Um… I think you´re just hungry," he informed her with a smile that swung between amusement and confusion. "Let´s go get you something to eat," he said, offering his hand.

She eagerly took it and got up from the bed as naked as she had been when he found her. Benjamin grabbed the sheet and, very flustered, wrapped it around her.

He fed her vegetable soup. It was not the best soup ever but she insisted that she had never tasted anything better, until he made her try Nutella, a guilty pleasure of his. He had to make her slow down at one point because she choked a little on a piece of bread where he had smeared the gooey goodness. And finally he needed to make her stop.

"I thought gluttony was a sin," he joked, but she paled. "Hey, hey… I´m joking."

"I didn´t know I was committing the sin of gluttony, I just enjoy the taste of Nutella."

"Of course you do, it´s delicious."

She rubbed her stomach and crinkled her nose. "I guess I have to pay attention to my stomach, too, not only my mouth," she smiled, but soon changed demeanor. "God is endlessly forgiving, but I don´t want to break more rules. I´m hopeful that, when I die, I can be an angel again, but I´m not sure of what will happen to me and that´s what scares me; the unknown," she said as a couple of tears escaped her eyes.

At a loss, he gave her some water. He had about a million questions, but didn´t think it was the right moment to ask.

"This tastes like silky air, but it´s more satisfying than Nutella."

He looked at her bed sheet clad body and blushed. "We… need to find you some clothes."

While Benjamin was out getting her something to wear, she investigated her surroundings. She had seen human dwellings millions of times, but been highly uninterested in the changes they suffered through time. Renesmee, as was normal for angels, felt attracted to loving feelings and saw material things in terms of the love that was placed on each object. For instance, she frequently found that kids´ drawings glowed with love, as did some pictures, toys, and even some plants. Sometimes it was something useless like a ring or, on one occasion, even a pair of scissors. And the moments she spent with humans she spent basking in their love for God and each other, so she never paid much attention to their ways of life. But this was to be her world now; she wanted to understand what everything was for.

She was examining a sponge in the kitchen sink, trying to attribute some use to the fluffy thing, when her stomach twisted painfully. She wasn´t hungry again, she was sure of that, this feeling was completely different. She felt like she might explode.

For the third time since she landed on earth, she was sure that she was going to die before long. She felt such sadness then, not because she truly feared being dead now—she even had to admit that pain was something she´d be glad to be rid of—, but because she thought she wouldn´t get to say goodbye to Benjamin.

Benjamin found her sitting on the bed, rocking back and forth to try to mitigate the unbearable discomfort.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, dropping the bags he had been carrying. "What´s wrong?"

"My stomach hurts again. It feels as if it will burst. I was so scared I was going to die without saying goodbye to you."

"What makes you think you´re dying so soon?" he asked, starting to worry, realizing this was the second time she expressed fearing that.

"I was sent here to die, Benjamin. I just don´t know when it´ll happened," she moaned.

"You were sent here to die?"

"I told you. I was to chose someone to die in your stead or come here myself, as a human. Humans die."

Benjamin looked out the window and saw the rain. He felt agonizingly guilty because he knew that the world was now drowning in the incessant night rains that were causing innumerable problems to humanity, and that this miraculous being had to die because of him. "It´s still raining. Isn´t it supposed to stop now that you´re human?"

Renesmee felt a particularly sharp spasm and was unable to answer.

"I´m sorry, Renesmee. I think I know what your problem is. Come," he said, extending his hand. "We can talk more after you… um…" he stuttered as he guided her through the room. "I think you need to relieve yourself. Sit there and… er… let go, push a little…" he explained turning beet red. "And then you can clean yourself with this," he concluded, pointing at the toilet paper.

"Don´t go!" she asked panicked. Hunched over her stomach.

"I´ll be just outside. Trust me, you´ll want privacy for this."

Benjamin had been right. She had never been so disgusted or embarrassed. The noises and the smells that her body was producing were simply horrible. But she did feel better after that. Cleaning herself had made her gag, but she was lucky not to find out about vomiting that night, too.

Benjamin had to enlighten her about the most basic human needs. Talking about menstruation was not easy at all, but he figured that since she was a girl, that was bound to happen. It was not that she was completely ignorant about bodily functions; it just wasn´t the same seeing parts of it in passing and intensely living through it with no rest.

As the weeks passed, she started feeling more comfortable in her new weak and needy body, and she was no longer afraid to die every time she experienced something new. The only moments that still carried uncertainty were when she felt sleepy. She couldn´t help that _this is it, I´ll die now_ was the last thing she thought of before succumbing to sleepiness.

She now understood Capital Sins a lot better.

Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust were very easy to fall into. She had some difficulty distinguishing when it was normal to be hungry or tired, and when it was not. She had discovered that when she was nervous, she wanted to eat; or if she faced a particularly difficult challenge —like cooking— she felt the need to rest. She was worried that she was overwhelming Benjamin with her neediness; she required constant reassurance that she was behaving normally.

What confused and tortured Renesmee even more was desire.

She had always loved Benjamin. She had known him and looked after him for all of his life. She remembered being summoned to his side by his mother. She had invoked Renesmee with simple yet powerful words that carried the unpolluted, undiluted love of a mother for her son and bound her to baby Benjamin.

But this was different. She still felt protective of him, though admittedly _he_ protected her now, not the other way around. She still found him fascinating and fundamentally good. She continued to view his heart as a huge dwelling for kindness, generosity, and love; his head as brilliant, and his hands as laborious and talented. But now she found him appealing in other, less spiritual ways.

Before, his lips made her warm with joy when he smiled; now, they also made her warm with want, whether he smiled or not. She followed his hands with hungry eyes, and accurately understood that plea that had started this debacle.

_Touch me, touch me_, she wanted to ask, but didn't.

She knew for a fact that it was not a sin to want somebody, but she did have a black and white view about couples and romance. Anything went, as long as it was exclusive, unwavering, and unending. That was the purpose of marriage, making a statement of one´s true devotion for a lover. However, she didn´t think Benjamin was about to ask her any day soon.

Benjamin was her only guide and friend in this new life. She could feel her guardian angel and God´s love, but angelic laws and free will meant she wouldn´t get to actually see them at all. She was afraid to be rejected and make things awkward. Benjamin hadn´t, after all, indicated he wanted more than friendship. She really didn´t know how to go about this, and she didn´t think she could endure that yearning any longer.

Renesmee had quickly learned what felt good, and she had a marvelous imagination, so she was taking a shower and trying to quell her need on her own when she heard a ruckus coming from the living room. Her frustrated attempt forgotten, she covered herself with a towel and went to investigate.

"Benjamin?" she called.

A table was upset, and there was some broken glass dispersed over the floor.

"Yeah. Sorry to interrupt your shower," he said entering the living room, broom in hand, without looking at her.

"What happened?"

"I stumbled over the table and broke the vase," he said, giving her his back.

"Need help?"

"No. It´s okay. Just go get dressed."

If desire had tortured Renesmee, it was nothing compared to what Benjamin went through. He was desperately in love with her, but he thought that a former angel would have been too pure to harbor any earthly desires.

Boy was he mistaken.

Renesmee was not very good in the discretion department. It wasn´t that she was shameless, more that she was clueless. Up until that moment, it had been only chance that had prevented Benjamin to hear her while she relieved herself in the shower.

He had come home from work hours earlier, because he needed to finally talk to her about her reason for being a human. The night before, there had been a deadly mudslide on a mountain a few miles from where they lived. Over three thousand people were presumed dead.

The rains needed to stop, and only Renesmee held the answers. Benjamin was determined to find a solution to what he had unraveled.

However, he had not been prepared for what greeted him.

He softly knocked on her door before entering. At first, he thought Renesmee wasn´t there and was about to head to the kitchen, when he was stopped in his tracks by the most astonishing sound: a moan.

"Benjamin," she mewled. Loud.

And that was followed by series of deliciously torturous hums.

He fled.

Benjamin wanted her so much he felt like crying.

When Renesmee came out of her room, finally dressed, things were back to normal, almost. The same way that the vase he´d broken could never be put back together, Benjamin could never un-hear the way she had uttered his name.

Regardless, he had something serious to talk about with her.

"Ren, we need to fix this. I can´t carry this guilt anymore," he murmured placing his head in his hands. She sighed and sat on the couch next to him, patting his back soothingly. She could tell something else was tormenting him.

"What happened, Benjamin?"

He took a deep breath and told her about the thousands of people that had perished the previous night. "Why is it still raining, Ren? You´re here, you are human. Wasn´t it for that purpose that they took your wings? To make this chaos stop?"

"I guess it´s because I´m still alive."

"What?"

"I have to die for balance to be completely restored," she said patiently.

Benjamin squeezed his eyes as he processed this. He was ashamed to confess, even to himself, that he was nearly fine with the idea of her living a long, happy life in spite of what that meant for humanity.

"There´s got to be another way," he whispered to himself, but Renesmee answered anyway.

"There isn´t."

"There´s nothing to do, then?"

She gazed at him with sad eyes.

"I could die."

"People don´t voluntarily die." _And I don´t want you to die_, he didn´t add.

She looked at him pleading with him to understand.

"No!" he roared, making her jump. "I will not let you harm yourself, I can´t. Please, get that idea out of your head. That would be suicide, and we both know that´s a mortal sin."

They fought. He was adamant that she should live until her moment came, a moment that neither of them had a right to determine; and she was insistent that she could not stand by and watch so many people get hurt because of her mistake.

"My mistake, Ren, mine! You would have never touched me if I hadn´t behaved like a horny ass! You wouldn´t be here," he choked. "Those people´s deaths are on me, not you."

She sighed.

"Let´s go to the site."

"What? No!"

It took her two more days to convince him to go.

From as far as two miles before they got to the mountain, they felt the first waves of putrid, warm air. Benjamin was regretting having conceded to that madness more than ever.

They had seen the news, but the devastation they found was insupportable. Entire families had perished or disappeared under the avalanche of mud that covered like morbid chocolate icing an entire village. The search and rescue teams were still trying to recuperate the bodies of people that were still missing. A few relatives of the victims that lived far from the site were still optimistic they would find survivors, but the unequivocal, sweet and nauseous scent of death that pervaded the soil, the air, and the water of the nearby river spoke loudly of their misplaced hope.

They stayed, and Benjamin furtively moved things around to help unearth more bodies. They also talked to people, asked if they could volunteer to gather supplies. The chilling response of one person was that there was no one that needed supplies, that they were all dead.

Benjamin and Renesmee finally left feeling worse that before.

"Do you see it now, Benjamin?"

"See what?" he avoided.

"I can´t allowed more people to suffer like that for me."

The image of the tiny body of a child being dug out of the muddy debris played before her eyes in a loophole.

"You can´t be serious, Ren," he pleaded. "You were so scared to die, not knowing what to expect. Tell me, Renesmee, what´s the fate of suicides?"

She looked petrified.

"That´s my point, damn it! Look at your face, you are scared!"

"Of course, I´m scared, Benjamin. I´m terrified! I don´t want to condemn myself," she confessed. "But I have no choice! I was a guardian angel, it´s my instinct to love and protect people."

"To protect me! You were _my_ guardian angel! Mine! I´m asking you not to leave me, Renesmee."

She sobbed. "I failed you, I don´t want to leave you and hurt you more, but I have to do what´s right, and you can´t stop me."

"I can´t let you endanger your soul. I´ll do it."

She was stunned for a few seconds.

"Of course you won´t. How can I condemn you for my own sake? All of this would have been for nothing."

He cried for hours, impermeable to her attempts to comfort him; he only stopped when he fell asleep.

She dozed off, too, and for the first time since she became human, she didn´t think that would be her last moment.

She awoke with the first rays of light. The rain clouds, having discharged their nightly dose of water, made the sky look amazing; the black-blue dawn was all striped in red and fuchsia. She regarded daybreak in peace, breathing the green smell of nature and listening to the birds wake up to sing their praises to the sun.

She grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went to the bathroom to fill the bathtub. Sadly, she had seen this done before.

She poured the rose scented oil that Benjamin had bought for her and tried to relax in the hot, bubbly water.

With a shaky hand, she picked up the knife and placed the sharp edge parallel to her wrist. She scrunched her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Wait!"

She had been so focused on fighting her nerves that she hadn´t felt or heard Benjamin enter the bathroom. He knelt next to her and took the hated blade from her hand.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, aware that he was asking her to kiss her future killer.

She nodded. "Can you make love to me?" she countered.

His face crumple in pain as tears slid down his face and a chopped sob left his lips.

"You don´t have to if you don´t want to, you know," she soothed, uselessly trying not to let the hurt show.

"If I don´t want to," he muttered shaking his head in disbelief. "I´m in love with you, Ren. I love you, and I want you so much."

It was her turn to cry. "Why did you never say anything? I love and want you, too. We could have been together the whole time," she blubbered in despair.

"Shh… Shh…" he hushed her and took her lips with his as he carried her to his bed.

Instinct and longing, urgency and despair, guided them. Benjamin felt powerless to deny her, he desired her too much to stop to consider the fact that he´d soon be without her, that she´d soon be wiped from this world by his own hand; yet he loved her too much not to do it himself.

He paused just one push from being inside her. "I don´t want to hurt you," he whispered.

"It´ll be only a moment," she said.

Both of them talking about more than her virginity.

After the first couple of minutes of mild discomfort, the sensations built slowly but surely; her pupils got wider and wider as he rocked slowly: back, forth, back, forth. It marveled her, being this close, this amalgamated with another living being. He was inside her, really inside her.

"Right now, we are like one being," she conjectured.

"We are," he agreed, unsure of how he´d continue to live with only half of himself.

He moved them to get her to straddle him, and she looked uncertain for a bit.

"Your body will know what it needs," he assured her.

Renesmee felt him settle deeper inside her and gasped. She started tracing an infinity symbol with her hips, each side of the loop granted additional friction to her clitoris and the feelings just got better, stronger, deeper. She moved faster, faster, chasing the promise of something fantastic.

With her heartbeat going crazy and her breath coming so quickly, she briefly speculated if she could die of this. She found she´d be fine with that. "Is this how you´ll do it?" she wanted to ask, but she was already spiraling out of her body as blinding pleasure consumed her.

"Where are you going?" he grabbed her arm as minutes later she got up from the bed. He was terrified of letting her out of his sight.

Her lips twitched in amusement. "To the bathroom."

"I don´t think so," he said shaking his head no.

"Benjamin, I´m just going to pee."

He reluctantly let her go.

She had actually hadn´t considered more than using the toilet before he had stopped her, but now she viewed this as the opportunity it was. Based on how she felt, she believed it would be harder for him to kill her now, and she had never wanted that for him to begin with.

After quickly peeing, she grabbed the blade and before she lost her nerve, she got in the now cold water and slit her writs.

Renesmee bit down the scream that wanted to escape. She shivered from pain and cold. The water stung in her wounds as she tried to concentrate on the pretty patterns her blood made; it slowly swirled and tainted the water a deeper pink with each weakening beating of her heart.

It wasn´t long before Benjamin barged into the bathroom.

"No! Renesmee, no! Please, why?"

"Because I love you," she cooed.

Benjamin grabbed the knife and pressed it to her neck. "I love you, too." He choked.

He was about to cut her when time slowed and then stopped as Gabriel appeared. He was the perfect picture of righteous anger and exasperation.

"How dare you, Renesmee?" asked the archangel.

It was so good to see him that despite the embarrassment of her current situation —for Renesmee hated to disappoint the angel so badly— she couldn´t help but smile at his disapproving face.

"They are suffering because of me. I could not allow it."

"You immature child! Why do you insist on thinking you know better than Our Father? Do you think He makes mistakes, Renesmee? What gave you the right to second guess His decisions? The Quaddisin was over indulgent with you and would have let that first infraction pass with a light punishment, once. Yet, saving your protégée because you thought it was unfair for him to die that way, and then transferring your energy to him was not enough disobedience for you. You had to do this atrocity! God had already provided a solution, and you have endangered that!"

"I´m sorry, Gabriel. I was sent here to die in place of Benjamin, to restore the balance. I didn´t see another choice, the longer I lived the worse they´d endure. Why delay God´s solution? Damning my soul is worth it if it means saving so many from suffering any longer. "

Gabriel´s eyes softened ever so slightly. "You were sent here to be human, not to die."

"But Suriel said to chose a human to die in Benjamin´s place or become a human myself so I could die instead!" she stated a little bewildered.

"When did he ever say that? Humans die, it´s true, but it was not your death that would bring back equilibrium, it was your child."

"My— what?"

Renesmee looked down at her naked body as if she could see any evidence of what Gabriel was claiming; she noticed then that her wounds had vanished.

"You have conceived today, and while doing so all the gifts you accidentally bestowed on Benjamin have now been transferred to the child. Now both you and Benjamin are mortal and your child is to become an angel to take over your place."

"When?" she sobbed, already agonizing about the idea of losing her child.

"That I cannot tell you. You will have to trust in God."

Time reinstated its pace as Gabriel departed, and Renesmee felt the sharp edge of the knife at her throat.

"Stop!" she urged Benjamin, who dropped the blade with unmistakable relief. "Look," she whispered, lifting her arms out of the water. Even as Benjamin tried to absorb what she was showing him she thought of something more. "Benjamin, make this water do something?"

He blinked a couple of times and then focused on doing what Renesmee asked.

Nothing happened.

Ӂ

There was no moon and the darkness was nearly absolute; there was a fresh, moist breeze, but no hint of clouds marred the sky. Renesmee was rocking on a chair in the porch, nursing Jacob, and Benjamin was reclined on the railing watching the stars wink-wink at them in the dead of the night.

Little by little, a soft glow eclipsed the stars and soon all they could see was the origin of the light: Gabriel.

"No," Renesmee moaned hugging her son to her chest as Benjamin closed the distance between them, assuming a protective stance.

"It´s not the time… yet," Gabriel promised, to which they relaxed a little. "That time will come one day, though, when he´s a man. Meanwhile, take good care of him, be happy, and enjoy your life as a family."

Renesmee sobbed for her pending loss long after Gabriel faded away. She knew one day, a day that would come far too soon, she would have to part with her son, and she would. For it was God's will, and this was her penance. Renesmee would live with that guilt, that torment, that loss for the remainder of her days; but until that time came, she vowed to live her life to the fullest, to enjoy and reveal in each day and moment as if it was her last.

_The End_


End file.
